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She’s a British beauty who invaded the United States this spring, stealing the crown from the openly bisexual Laura LaFrate in a highly rated season of America’s Next Top Model.

When she got to Calgary on Wednesday, though, the gods of westernwear quickly defeated Sophie Sumner.

“I brought flannel shirts, thinking that would qualify,” says the fashion world’s new “It” girl with a self-deprecating laugh, “but no one told me it was going to be so hot — and I don’t know how to dress cowgirl.”

When I meet the willowy Sumner, she’s dressed in a black and white, polka-dot minidress, leather moccasins on her feet and bright blue polish on her nails.

I hardly have the heart to tell the exceptionally sweet 22-year-old that while she’d look gorgeous in a potato sack, when it comes to the Calgary Stampede’s standards, she’s a sartorial disaster.

She was spared the lesson, though, thanks to Stampede assistants sent out to buy a pair of Wranglers and a mother-of-pearl buttoned western shirt in a size, oh, I don’t know, minus zero.

“She can’t even go back in the chute area dressed like that,” a young woman assigned to Sumner confides.

Sadly, the rest of us sweating masses of humanity don’t have the services of such a lifesaver when we head out this week.

Thanks in large part to a heat wave that makes you want to run naked through the streets of town in a heatstroke stupor, the centennial Stampede is turning out to be the Stampede That Fashion Forgot.

Don’t take just my word for it, though.

“I haven’t seen this much ugly in a while,” says Kim Flanagan (kimflanagan.com), one of Calgary’s top stylists. “After a night out at Cowboys, I had to go home and wash my eyeballs.”

Flanagan says this is because Stampede 2012 has transformed into a “Trampede,” with women using the rising thermometer to justify wearing next to nothing.

“A tube top and short shorts at our age?” says Flanagan. “If I have a message for women in town this week, it’s ‘Get Dressed!’ ”

Luckily for the rest of us, Flanagan has good tips on just how to salvage our final weekend of Stampede style.

Even in the melting heat, there are ways to stay cool, she says, “without showing people your private parts.”

It’s all about balance: If you’re wearing tight pants or shorts that aren’t showing “butt cleavage,” a light, flowing blouson top is great.

“Showing a little real cleavage is fine, but then the bottom half should be looser, or at least more covered up,” she says. “You can have only one piece of poison.”

Fashion aspirants can even get away with cool sandals instead of cowboy boots, as long as there are nods to western style with a kerchief, a cowboy hat or a shot or two of denim.

“I’m really liking the feminine dresses, some with lace and others in simple white.”

Never forget, she adds, the need for age-appropriateness.

“Those Daisy Dukes look great on the younger ones,” she says of the shorts that appeared on bottoms big and small last year.

While I, too, have seen a few too many Daisy Dukes and bare tummies for one week, there are more than a few tasteful examples out and about to provide inspiration.

“I wanted to go for cowgirl with a touch of feminine,” says 38-year-old Wendy Rangel, a resident of Mexico City who’s here for her first Stampede dressed in a pretty blue western-style dress with cowboy boots and hat.

“I ride horses back home, so I know about the western thing.”

At the rodeo, Kristina Chau of Toronto keeps cool in a white lace dress, her nod to western her hat, boots and denim vest.

“I borrowed the boots,” she says with a laugh.

Some, however, argue that behaving one’s self when it comes to dressing for Stampede is simply hogwash.

“There are no rules,” exclaims amateur barrel racer Nikki Holmes, who with twin sister Kelly Holmes-Moynihan (“don’t you dare ask us our age”) has so much bling on her Stampede wear I’m almost blinded.

“We interpret Stampede style as ‘Kitschy Cowgirl.’ It’s all about having fun.”

Fun is the word of the day for Andrew Rose and Nick Fraser, who have, pardon the pun, the “scones” to show up in kilts at the rodeo.

“We’re mixing it up, expressing our manliness with the western shirt, boots and cowboy hat,” says the 24-year-old Rose, a native of Edinburgh.

The two young men, here for the summer to play rugby with the Calgary Hornets, say their unusual duds have been great for their social lives: “the ladies have a lot of questions,” says the 21-year-old Fraser with a chuckle.

OK, I’ll bite. What’s under those kilts?

“What do you think?” says Rose. Thankfully, this is one Stampede fashion mystery still up for debate . . . as long as they don’t take a spin on the zipline.

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